George Vakirtzis worked in the beginning as an apprentice of Turkish designer Kiamil Nour whose workshop, located in Kokkinia, Piraeus, created signs, circus and local festival signboards as well as whitewash advertising on outdoor walls. Up to 1936, he painted shop front signs, sets for travelling theater groups and decorations. Together with Kiamil, he created the first advertisements for Kokkinia cinemas on paper rolls, using colors mixed with fish glue1. At the time, he found out that the posters of the ORFEFS and KRONOS (later renamed KOTOPOULI) cinemas, at the center of Athens and which had made a great impression on him, were works by Stefanos Almaliotis. Hence, in 1938, at the age of 15, he became an apprentice at the workshop of Almaliotis, which was at the time housed at the workshop of set designer Mitsos Makris, in an old construction-engineering factory on Sofokleous street. It was there that he was taught to the technique of the découpé2 and introduced to the secrets of various trades by wood workers, sign makers and painters. He learned to sketch compositions drawing his material from photographs, to construct substrates from paper that was propped by wooden panels of various shapes and large sizes, and to transfer his drawings to canvas very fast. Over time, he was introduced to the‘behavior’ of colors, mastered the technique of mixing, and worked on different variations of the final work. He relied on his confident brushstroke and the effectiveness of his artistic gesture. Almaliotis taught him how to balance the main elements of the composition (main motif, compositions framing it, lettering of the titles, positions of the names of leading actors). The people who worked with Vakirtzis were Memas – Gerasimos Touliatos –, who was to remain his collaborator for many years to come, Andreas Vazopoulos, and Sissis-Sisak Etelekian (see p. 280). He later met Kostas Kouzounis, Manolis Panayotopoulos, Vangelis Fainos and Charalambos Serasis. In 1939, Almaliotis created his own workshop, first on Konstantinos Palaiologos street and then on Zoodohos Pigi street, at No. 15 (see also pp. 255-261).
In G. Vakirtzis’ workshop. From left: M. Hondroyannis, Ger. Touliatos, G. Vakirtzis and N. Tzimoulis.
Vakirtzis’ education was completed at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1939-1946), which he attended upon Almaliotis’s insistence. Vakirtzis was hired by the Spyros D. Skouras film distribution company, which managed the ATTIKON cinema, to design advertising material for the company. In 1948, Vakirtzis organized his own workshop, in the yard at the back of the ATTIKON cinema, at 11, Christou Lada street.In the years 1952-1953, he followed a course at the Beaux Arts School in Paris and traveled to Barcelona3, where he was taught the technique of pistolet by Spanish cinema painters. He used this technique upon his return to Athens, and through the years 1953-54. In 1960 he moved his workshop to Amalias avenue and soon after, in 1968, he quitted painting giant cinema posters. Looking at his writings, as well as the path he chose to follow from the middle of the 1960’s onward (or at least during the first few years), one gets the sense that he wishes to distance himself from his work on the Giant cinema posters. This becomes clear in his choice of themes for the series Excavations (1964-66) and Ironies and Invocations
(1967-69). He later returned to his earlier, cinematic themes as is evident in his series Reflections (1972-73). Overall, though, and through the various thematic choices in his paintings, he consciously tried to turn hi interest to other subjects through sketching, color and a particular artistic outlook. This happened initially through the projection of solitary figures in front of complex multifigured compositions (p. 249) and, later on, with the overall subjects of his work, the inclusion and re-working of familiar motifs from works of great painters of the past (Raphael’s painting “The School of Athens” was at the core of the series of works entitled Comments- Action, 1975-77)4, the singling out of currentissue documents from the press5, and the ever increasing use of photographs as primary material6. Such elements were worked into the core of distinct thematic cycles by the painter during the 1970’s and the 1980’s. Following this, he increasingly reworked topics related to his cinema works, placing them in an entirely different context (Golden Work, 1971- 1973 and, mainly, Comments-Action, 1975-1977). It would not be fair to blame the artist for not having realized the value of his contribution to the art of the Giant cinema poster. These works were ephemeral in every sense of the word. It took more than twenty years and a sustained commitment on the part of all the members of the Hellaffi Group7, created in the 1970’s, to salvage the loose pieces of his Giant cinema posters –posters kept literally by chance in cinema storage rooms in Athens, Piraeus and all over Greece. Cinemas, not the least, that had not yet been torn down or converted into department stores in the ’70s and ’80s.
The artistic value of these works as a whole was revealed following their restoration8 and a series of exhibitions organized by the Hellaffi Group in Athens, Thessaloniki and other Greek cities, as well as –and most importantly–in Paris, Venice, London, Munich, Frankfurt and Cyprus (see also pp. 251-253). The works acquired a new function in this different context: their artistic quality was brought forward and the public had the opportunity to see them up close for the first time and appreciate them as works of art in their own right. The task of bringing forth Vakirtzis’ contribution to the art form of the Giant cinema poster was taken on by people who had an equal passion for the arts of cinema and painting.
Ι. Ο.
NOTES
1 On the fish glue painting technique, see Giant posters of Cinema by George Vakirtzis, Athens s.a. [1968], p. 114.
2 On the découpé(s) technique, see op. cit.,p. 45 and also on this site here.
3 On the pistolet technique, see op. cit., p. 71 and also on this site here
4 See Yorgos Vakirtzis, Athens s.a. [1989], pp. 159-193.
5 An important motif in this group of works was a photograph from an English newspaper picturing a young man streaking (running naked in a public space as a means of protest, see also ZYGOS magazine, issue 10 11/1974, p. 48).
6 See “A River Called G. Vakirtzis” by N. Koundouros, op. cit., pp.46-48. See also on this site here
7 Chr. Margaritis, ed., Giant Cinema Posters from the cinemas of Athens 1950-1975. The Hellaffi Collection, Athens 1993, pp. 21-22.
8 By the painter Marios Hondroyiannis. See also on this site here
Stroke of brush by G. Vakirtzis. Fish glue paint on the backside of a block paper, where G.V. had drawn a Model for a Giant poster, c. 1953 (see VGM.49).